SotA tips, better than a guide

I had a frustrating Saturday night in the battlegrounds. I think I entered every one at least once before I finally completed my random daily.

I mentioned the other day that unlike LFD you need to both:

bring your best game, and

have a reasonable idea of the battleground BEFORE you enter it.

Sure you need to know vaguely what to do in an instance, but if the others know, then an instance can be quite forgiving.

Cynwise and I were discussing giving you Battleground initiates a leg up, so this is the 1st of my helping hands.

SotA (Stand of the Ancients) is a battleground that is easy to hate. It’s easy to get totally pwned and draws are all to frequent and bloody frustrating.

You will find guides to this battleground elsewhere. The layout, the basic tactics etc. This isn’t one of those guides, this is a group of tips, the fundamentals that will make or break a SotA.

The basics.

It is a battleground divided into two phases. Each side gets up to 10 minutes to attack and defend.

The side that attacks 1st sets the time limit for the side that attacks 2nd (the defenders in phase 1). This is determined purely on how long it takes the 1st attacking team to reach the relic and end the phase.

If you can get there in 3 minutes, you opposition will only have 3 minutes to repeat the feat when they become attackers.

Quick request… Horde, tune out now please. Go feed the cat, wash the dishes, throw your arms up in disgust that a Gnome is teaching how to play… Just don’t read any further. If you play both Alliance and Horde side… faction transfer now.

Siege weapons

Siege weapons are the key to this battleground. They literally win the game. Control the Demolishers and you control the game.

Individual players are just distractions, noob bait to some extent, and while you want to control the players to MUST control the Demos.

Offense

They are your hard hitting key to the relic. These will blow the doors between the beach and the relic much more effectively than the seaforium charges.

When you get off the ship, grab a seaforium charge and jump in a demolisher.

If you are a melée class, you are best driving and blasting the walls. If you are a ranged class, you best serve your team by jumping inboard and protecting the demolisher.

If you don’t get a seat, don’t worry… Just protect the demolishers from the ground. This is your core task – protect the demolishers. If an opponent isn’t attacking a demolisher, ignore them!

It is worth being on a demolisher as a ranged character… You are shielded by it until it’s destroyed – go to town on the demolisher!

If your demo is destroyed before the gate is, your next task (assuming you are close to the gate) is to rush the gate, plant your seaforium (you did get one didn’t you?) and rush back for another demo.

Remember, to win this phase:

PROTECT THE DEMOS!

Defense

Needless to say, when you are on defense, your task is pretty much the opposite.

The (active) Demos must die!

Note the key word there…

ACTIVE

If there is no one driving a demo at the moment, they are less of a threat than the one charging your gate.

That active demo is your No. 1 priority.

You are welcome to slaughter your opposition, as long as there are no demos active. If there are, disengage immediately and destroy the demos.

This isn’t to say you should ignore the inactive demos, you just need to handle them with a little finesse.

DO NOT DESTROY INACTIVE DEMOS!

You just waste your time if you destroy inactive demos. They will respawn and you will have to start all over again.

No, your objective with inactive demos is to hurt them, prepare then for destruction when they become active.

Someone, preferably a melée player (no mana lost and it’s easier for ranged to take active ones down), needs to take the demos to 20% health.

Do not use DoTs. You don’t want to leave the demo at 20% only to hear it explode 20 seconds later.

When your opponents jump in the inactive demo, thus making it active (and therefore your 1st priority), a couple of quick fireblasts and it is stopped in it’s tracks without ever getting close to the gates!

Remember, to win this phase:

DESTROY THE DEMOS!

Bombs (otherwise known as seaforium charges)

Only offense can use the bombs and the objective is to use them on the gates.

Offense

You will of course only be doing this when the Demos are safe (or the one you were on just got destroyed at the gate)… Amirite?

The seaforium charge is a bit like Aeroguard and condoms.

Never leave home without them if you want to have a good weekend!

They are on the docks and at each graveyard. You can pick them up when mounted. Make sure they are on your hotbar. If the last thing you do before dying in front of a gate is plant your charge, then your death was a worthwhile sacrifice to the cause – that might be the bomb that brings down the gate and wins the battle!

Seaforium Charges:

GET ‘EM, USE ‘EM!

Defense

On defense you can’t use them, you can only disarm them.

The best way to disarm them is to kill the player before they have had the chance to plant them… Better yet, before they have had the chance to pick them up.

Remember though, they are a minor concern relative to the demolishers. If you destroy the demolishers and control the players away from the gates, you will never need to worry about them.

If you find yourself next to a planted seaforium charge at the gates and there is nothing else to do for 5 seconds, go ahead and disarm it.

Otherwise…

DESTROY THE DEMOS!

Graveyards

There are 5 graveyards in the game, 3 of them controlled by flags. A flag once taken, can never be retaken.

The two non-flag controlled graveyards are on the beach (attackers) and in the courtyard (defenders).

There is a flag on either side of the field just past the 1st gates (Blue & Green).

There is one in the center on the map before the Yellow gate.

Offense

You want, nay need the Blue and/or Green gate graveyards.

These will ensure that you Rez further up the field, closer to your objective and nearer the workshops (there are seaforium charges here too folks) associated with the Blue & Green gates.

Under normal circumstances you do not want to take the graveyard near the gate of the yellow sun.

LEAVE THAT GRAVEYARD ALONE!

Why?

If you capture that graveyard, where do you think the enemy will respawn?

Yeah, in the citadel between you and the relic – not what you want!

Sure their respawns will get between your new demolishers and the yellow gate, but you are protecting your demolishers… Right… Right?

You don’t want them spawning in their courtyard!

Exception to this rule:

There is one exception, only one mind you.

If your group is good AND you have someone standing by at the relic AND there is time on the clock (you want to cap the relic with at least 30 seconds on the clock) AND it is the 2nd and last phase (ie, extending the clock won’t give the enemy a chance on offense) AND the majority of your forces are in the courtyard…

Then and only then you have my blessing to cap the graveyard at the Gate of the Yellow Sun.

Why do I give my blessing?

If you all form up around the enemy’s graveyard, you can farm them as they spawn. A few well timed frost novas and other snares combined with AoE means they will only see the gray of death until the completion of the round.

Just make sure you cap the relic with plenty of time on the clock to account for laggery vagueries.

Yes, I have been in a group that waited until the last 10 seconds… We were too late and it was a draw!

Defense

What you let them off the beach?

Once you have destroyed the 1st couple of demolishers and wounded the others, you will most likely have sent the invaders to their graveyard in the middle of the beach.

What better way to stop demolishers becoming active than to cut down their drivers as they spawn?

If you keep the majority holed up at the graveyard and stop those running for the demolishers, they shouldn’t break down any gates and you should earn yourself an achievement.

Just leave one or two near each dock to slow down the runners, then farm the graveyard.

If they get past your Green or Blue gates you need to move immediately. I’d even suggest ignoring stray opponents until you have all fallen back.

Now, apart from destroying their demolishers you have 2 important targets to protect… The Blue and Green graveyards.

If you can protect these, the attackers will have to spawn on the beach, which means they will be returning in drubs and drabs at 30 second intervals after a 30 second run.

Fundamentally keeping these graveyards removes a minute from their clock each time you repel them – and they have much less than 10 minutes to get to the relic.

You won’t care if they take your grave yard at the Gate of the Yellow Sun. If they can, then they are already a threat to the gate.

Good news for you – you will spawn just the other side of the gate, away from GY farmers. Don’t stay there though – get to the other side of the gate and TAKE DOWN ACTIVE DEMOLISHERS!

Bad new for them – sure they spawn closer to the Yellow Gate, but…

In one easily farmable graveyard, and

up field from their new demolishers… They have to run down field for 30 seconds to get a demolissher that will take them a minute to get back to the gates.

PROTECT THE BLUE & GREEN GRAVEYARDS, FORFIET THE YELLOW ONE!

Cannons

They are big!

They go boom!

They give an achievement for their use!

They are bad mmmkay?

Should you use the guns?

no, No, nO, NOOOO!

Defense

Your prime objective as defense is to destroy the demos.

DESTROY THE DEMOS!

The most effective way to do this is on the ground.

But the guns are big!

They are big, but by the time they can hit anything, it’s really too late, they are already in range of your gates!

You want to be on the ground. If the 4 people that could man the turrets are on the beach then you will easily overpower them.

You – focused on demos, stray attackers and farming their graveyard.

Them – split between manning demolishers, running for cover and respawning at the grave yard.

The gun turrets reach neither the docks or the graveyard AND the travel tine on the missiles mean you will miss more than you hit AND you will crit for more damage than the gun can do anyway.

Meanwhile, the demos are getting free shots at your gates and the attackers are placing seaforium charges out of you range of fire.

Don’t let them get that close!

Starting the game

You have to start somewhere and that somewhere is random. You will start on offense or defense.

Offense

On offense your prime objective is to get to the relic ASAP, if not faster.

Your prime tool is the demolishers.

Use the demolishers, protect the demolishers, destroy the gates, take only those graveyards you need, cap the relic.

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23 Responses

i’ve been thinking about trying out other BGs, since i love wintergrasp but feel i’m missing out by not playing any of the others. perhaps SotA is the way to go. thanks! your guide breaks it down in a way i need to read it to understand it. i hope this is the first of a looong, multi-part series. : )

Of course I think we are both lucky and WG is fun due to server/faction domination.

WSG and AB scare off new players. Many people have ground their PvP teeth on them and know them well, but. Some part of me still feels they are the best. You actually get to do meaningful Player vs. Player.

Teamwork and organization are going to radically change how battlegrounds are played. The composition of teams in an area could actually matter! Classes who are best for the job would actually do those jobs!

The only time I’ve seen such raid-like efficiency was on the twink bgs, when my Mage was mocked for going offense. It took me a while to figure out that just because something works during a pug, it isn’t the right thong to do in an organized battle.

I feel so relieved I don’t have to cover Strand now, by the way. I can just point people here! Thanks!

Nice Strand tips Gnome! The graveyards in SotA have always been something I’ve never been certain of, and what effect they will have on spawn points…so I always leave them alone and just kill Alliance. But now I know! *scurries off with valuable information*

I can take a loss on the chin, a draw makes me curl up in a little ball and cry… Then hit the fridge to grab another beer to drown my sorrows.

Probably the only thin worse is a needless WSG loss when the flag caps are tied and both flags are held… This is frustrating because usually the last 5 minutes is spent with me holding the flag, dodging incoming attacks and screaming at the mid-field to:

“Get the f’n flag…. Please”

how I can remain polite in those conditions I will never know.

I was in one the other night where I was flag offense AND flag defense. Apart from the Resto Shammy covering my butt, everyone else waS either midfield or in the graveyard.

No one made attempts to cap or recover the flag… Except me.

I don’t run the flag as a 1st choice. I normally wait 5-10 seconds to see if anyone breaks away from mid-field.

Not capping the Southern/Yellow graveyard is exactly what I was talking about with graveyard contol and Rez vectors. Whenever that happens I facepalm, just because it makes the last stage of Strand so difficult. You want them rezzing as far away from you as possible.

Holding them at the graveyardis a great way to waste the offence time.

Main issue with SOTA at the moment is non scaling vehicles. A single dps can kill a vehicle in half the distance of Garage to Gate.

This is ok if the other side then gives up on defence but at the moment its leading to a lot of draws. I even got dropped into a game where at 3 mins in last night Horde already had yellow down. But with 2 healers we just killed them in the court for 7 mins and then they repeated the favor when it was our turn on offence. Draws 3 out of the last 4 games.

Offensively 4 vehicles stacked up with 2-3 meters in between is ideal with and everybody else charging in ahead of them as sacrifices. But players would rather lose the game then die. See how many will run out the door in AV if they get aggro ,resetting the fight.

Good post and great point about the numerical advantage being far better when the defenders take the battle to the beach and set up on the docks instead of at the gates. SotA sets up the offense into predictable (and frequently bad) groups of 7 or 8. Allocating your defensive personnel in proper teams with healers and a GY on the beach behind you is the only point in the match where you will get to control their egress up the beach.

[…] Strand of the Ancients: Kill the Demolishers if you’re on defense, and protect them if you’re on offense. Use bombs when you can, stay away from the cannons, practice good graveyard control — but SotA is all about the Demolishers. […]

SotA was a favorite of mine in the 71-79 bracket because the demolishers were hearty enough to stand some punishment so relic grabs were common. In that bracket, cannons are actually a VERY useful tool (particularly for those at the lower end of the bracket whos gear may not be optimal).

At 80 however, its true that the vehicles have not scaled with the gear and it becomes hard to do anything other than cluster in piles of PvP with no hope of objective seeking.

I will say that guns on the second tier have one fantastic use in either version (or at least did… haven’t been there in a while). Someone sitting in the inner guns on the 2nd tier can target and spam the graveyard flag making it completely impossible for the attackers to claim the graveyard. This tactic is generally worth the loss of a dps player, particularly an undergeared one.

I first discovered this by accident. I was in the lower end of the bracket 72-ish and still learning the BG so I manned the guns since I figured my damage would be a bit lacking. While doing so, I followed a lone player with my cannon sights over to the flag and shot him… it interrupted him, he tried again so I shot again to the same effect. He kept trying and I kept interrupting. And then I started to giggle like a schoolgirl.

Unless you are being trounced (and if you are, none of this matters) it’s a win / win tactic. You either make capping impossible, or you make them come kill your cannon. Either way, they burn the timeclock, which is a precious resourse there.

And boy am I glad that the recent patch makes the AV zerg much tougher… I witnessed a 4-6 man General kill once (two of them broke off to kill me… briefly). As a group of 6, they were more than enough to kill the boss with ALL FOUR towers intact… it was as impressive as it was hideous.